Aness Suheil Barghoti
09 March 2020•Update: 09 March 2020
JERUSALEM
Israel on Monday greenlighted planning for a road that would separate Palestinian communities from a Jewish-only settlement northeast of Jerusalem, effectively making it an "apartheid road."
The so-called “sovereignty road” is meant to help spur a controversial settlement plan in the West Bank known as E1.
“We are giving a green light to the ‘sovereignty road’ today” to connect Jerusalem and the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement, said Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennet.
“The project will improve the quality of life of the residents of the area and prevent unnecessary friction with the Palestinian population,” he added.
Bennet added that the road will enable the continuation of settlement buildings in the West Bank.
For years, the Israeli government has tried to dismantle the Abu al-Nawwar community to make way for its massive E1 settlement project in East Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities seek to expel some 10,000 Bedouin residents of the E1 zone, which sits on roughly 15 square kilometers of land northeast of Jerusalem, to build Jewish-only residential units linking Jerusalem to the Ma’ale Adumim settlement.
The planned Israeli building in E1 would effectively cut the West Bank in half and prevent the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
Israel occupied Jerusalem and the whole of the West Bank following the 1967 Six-Day War and began establishing settlements in the West Bank the following year.
The Palestinians want the West Bank – along with the Gaza Strip – for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Israeli settlement-building activity there as illegal.
